Chinese take stealth coatings to the next level...read it and weep F-35 fanboys...

Thanks to ApatheticRealist for the link!

pic via AUSAirpower.net

The year is 2025.  Despite efforts of real reformist, patriots and those concerned about US air power and not slaves to one particular airplane, the F-35 has made it into service.

A flight of F-35's from the USS Wasp are conducting a fleet air defense tasking.  Why?  Because those same patriots were shot down when they stated that an LHA wasn't properly equipped to act as an aircraft carrier.  4 of the F-35's are airborne (stripping away the Ground Combat Element and its vehicles and helicopters allows 20 to be carried) and according to the proponents, this is sufficient.  After all...the F-35 is a combat multiplier.  Its capable of doing things that the Super Hornet can only dream about despite it being slower, lower flying and less maneuverable.  Despite the fact that the Super Hornet carries a Rafael Pod that can identify, classify and sort aerial targets at BVR distance.  Despite the fact that the Super Hornet had been upgraded with an AESA that equals the F-35.

No.  The F-35 was the dancing, prancing all star.  Unfortunately the fanboys assumed that a plane planned in the 80's delayed until 2020 before it reached full operational capability would still be viable.

They underestimated their enemies and now they would pay.  Sensor fusion was suppose to be the saving grace of the air plane.  A flight of 4 planes in spread formation, so far away from each other that they were out of sight, could sweep the sky and see the enemy before being seen.  First see, first kill.

The Chinese aren't dummies.  They were drinking the milkshake of these pilots as soon as they left the deck of the Wasp. The worse was yet to come. In a blatant display of uncharacteristic arrogance, the Chinese sent up one (1) J-20.  It was loaded with six long range infra-red missiles in its cavernous hold.  An additional two short range missiles were loaded in its cheek bays.  They weren't needed.  The F-35's didn't see its attacker, only the fact that four Mach 3 missiles were heading toward them.  They turned to head away but the plane is slow.  They showed their back to the enemy and it just made them easier targets.  The missiles closed, the ship's air boss put his two MV-22's in the air because he knew that if he was lucky he'd be fishing his guys out of the ocean...but it wasn't to be.  Remember the Rand report?  The missiles continued to close and although skilled, the plane wasn't worthy of its pilots.  The plane maneuvered like a B-17.  Chinese arrogance was well founded.  One J-20 sent four USMC F-35's to the bottom of the sea.  The only thing left to do was to leave the area and notify the on-duty Casualty Assistance Officer....and the Chaplain.  They had bad news to deliver to the Mother's of America.  Sound far fetched?   Check this out from Defense One.

“Our proposed absorber is almost ten times thinner than conventional ones,” said Wenhua Xu, one of the team members from China’s Huazhong University of Science and Technology, in a statement.
In their paper, published today in the Journal of Applied Physics, the team describes a material composed of semi-conducting diodes (varactors) and capacitors that have been soldered onto a printed circuit board. That layer is sitting under a layer of copper resistors and capacitors just .04 mm thick, which they called an “active frequency selective surface material” or AFSS. The AFSS layer can effectively be stretched to provide a lot of absorption but is thin enough to go onto an aircraft. The next layer is a thin metal honeycomb and final is a metal slab.
The good news: the material isn’t locked away in a lab but published openly, so it’s not going to surprise anyone.

The next question we should ask is this.  They're putting stuff like this in open source materials.  What are they working on in secret? 

USMC F35 Pilot talking to ALIS Tech Support (dark humor)..

Courtesy of InvaderNet, a long time reader!

"Hello ALIS Tech Support, how may I help you?"

Marine: "My F-35 won't let me take off, what the hell?!"

"Have you tried turning it off and on?"

Marine: "Yes! It still won't start!"

"One moment please, I'll check it's computer records"

Marine: "....."

"Hmm, sorry it seems your gun.exe file is corrupted. You'll need to reinstall your software."

Marine: "I'm in the middle of the goddamn Hindu Kush! How can I possibly download 100Gb of software?!"

"I'm sorry, you'll need to find somewhere with a good connection. Can you get to Kabul?"

Marine: "No I f**king can't go to Kabul! There's about 5000 Taliban in the way!"

"Are you able to fly to Kabul?"

Marine: "NO BECAUSE MY FUCKING PLANE WON'T START!!!"

"One moment, I'll get my supervisor."

"*&@#%*@#^*&@#%(@#^%......."

This is all fun and games now...but the risk is real.  How many work arounds are we going to accept?

Kill it now, like we should have at least 5 years ago and let's do this right.  Oh and let's follow Greenert's advice.

PAYLOADS OVER PLATFORMS! 

If you're wondering why I'm focusing on the F-35 its simple.  This one program has so warped the DoD's procurement AND its warfighting concepts that its become a greater danger to the US and its allies than China, Russia, N. Korea and Iran (combined) could ever be!

The F-35 is killing the USAF budget too!

via Air Force Times..

The F-35 is going to eat up so much of the Air Force’s procurement budget going forward that the service will likely have to reduce the number of joint strike fighters it buys to pay for other things, such as the Long Range Strike-Bomber, experts said on Tuesday.

Then this...

In order to pay for the bomber, the Air Force will likely have to reduce the number of F-35s and other procurement programs, said Richard Aboulafia, an analyst for the Teal Group.
“You’ve got so many competing requirements for the Air Force’s procurement budget, and on top of that, you’re inserting $4 to $5 billion a year for LRS-B – or more – I believe it peaks at a somewhat higher number than that. There’s no way right now to make that all work,” Aboulafia told Air Force Times after speaking at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies.

And this...

“One: You could grow the topline [budget], which is not likely,” he said. “No. 2: You can create this national strategic priority line which comes out of somebody else’s budget – a lot of people tried that. It generally doesn’t work. Three: It can die and become a bill-payer for all for the other programs, which would be sad. Or four: The other programs have to give ground, either in terms of year-by-year procurement numbers or total procurement numbers, or both.”
Since the F-35 represents the lion’s share of other procurement programs, the Air Force’s stated goal of buying 1,763 joint strike fighters has become “highly untenable,” Aboulafia said.

Repeat after me!  DEATH SPIRAL!!!

Thanks to the readers that locked onto this in the comments section of another post.  But you do get what's actually happening here don't you?  They're all but shouting from the roof tops that this program is about to take a SERIOUS HAIRCUT!  But wait.  It gets even better!

Meanwhile, Canada plans to withdraw from the F-35 program and Norway may follow suit, and that will increase the cost of each F-35, said Eaglen, who also spoke at the Mitchell Institute.

Yeah.  That sound you hear from the F-35 Program Office is a mixture of pure fear and desperation.  This thing is spiraling and I couldn't be happier.

Autonomic Logistic Information System (ALIS) ... a single point of failure that should scare any expeditionary force!

Thanks to Mark for the link!

via Defense Aerospace

The biggest risk is that, since the F-35 cannot operate effectively without permanent data exchanges with its software labs and logistic support computers in the United States, any disruption in the two-way flow of information would compromise its effectiveness.

All F-35 aircraft operating across the world will have to update their mission data files and their Autonomic Logistic Information System (ALIS) profiles before and after every sortie, to ensure that on-board systems are programmed with the latest available operational data and that ALIS is kept permanently informed of each aircraft’s technical status and maintenance requirements. ALIS can, and has, prevented aircraft taking off because of an incomplete data file.

Given that the United States hopes to sell hundreds of F-35s to allies in Europe, Asia and Australia, the volume of data that must travel to and from the United States is gigantic, and any disruption in Internet traffic could cripple air forces as the F-35 cannot operate unless it is logged into, and cleared by, ALIS.

For example, “Mission data load development and testing is a critical path to combat capability,” Pentagon OT&E director Michael Gilmore said in his fiscal 2014 report. “Accuracy of threat identification and location depend on how well the mission data loads are optimized to perform in ambiguous operational environments.”

Updating and uploading mission data loads depends on a functioning Internet, and asWired.com noted in an Oct. 29 story, “undersea Internet cables are surprisingly vulnerable.” It quoted Nicole Starosielski, a media scholar at New York University, as saying that “people would be surprised to know that there are a little over 200 systems that carry all of the internet traffic across the ocean, and these are by and large concentrated in very few areas. The cables end up getting funneled through these narrow pressure points all around the globe.”

Recent activity by Russian ships near crucial undersea cables has added to concerns about the vulnerability of Internet, as recently illustrated by the New York Times, which noted that “Russian submarines and spy ships are aggressively operating near the vital undersea cables that carry almost all global Internet communications, raising concerns among some American military and intelligence officials that the Russians might be planning to attack those lines in times of tension or conflict.”

Here.

Yeah.  You read that right.   This is a layman's example but I think it applies.  How many times have you had the internet go down right here in the US?  Now imagine conducting operations in an out of area location...with bandwidth at a minimum and everyone wanting to get a piece of it (they're even talking about handing out phones and tablets)...and suddenly that Marine Platoon Leader is told that the air support he was counting on isn't coming because the computer won't let the plane fly!

When he calls back cussing, fussing and damning the Air Operations Officer to a bloody end, he gets the answer its because the link for ALIS is down!

Simply amazing!  HOW MUCH RISK ARE WE WILLING TO ACCEPT TO GET THIS AIRPLANE?

Open Source is a VALUABLE intel source! UPDATE.

via Free Beacon

The Washington Free Beacon disclosed this week that the photographs were actually of an Oct. 30 test of one of China’s secret anti-satellite missiles.
Other weapons systems that first appeared online on Chinese websites either unofficially or with the backing of Chinese censors are:
The new J-20 stealth jet that was made public in late 2010 in what analysts say was a managed Chinese propaganda roll out. The jet was first flight tested during the visit to China by then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who questioned Chinese leaders about the timing and was told the first flight was not intentionally timed for his visit.

• A graphic showing plans to build a military airstrip on Subi Reef in the disputed Spratly islands in the South China Sea, where a U.S. warship recently conducted a defiant freedom of navigation passage to Chinese maritime claims.

• The new DF-26 intermediate-range missile first disclosed unofficially in September 2014 and officially made public during a recent military parade.

Story here.

Chest Thumping Time!!!!!

Hey boys...GET YOUR ASSES OVER HERE!  SCHOOL CIRCLE!!!!

What we do here...What I hope that we do and why I love the tips from ALL MY READERS is because we're doing what some greasy haired bastard that's still a virgin, is worshipped by CIA/DIA intel heads and is being paid a boatload of money to do.  We're utilizing open source intel to get a better picture of whats going on in the world!

We're ahead of the curve.  We're not 100 percent right...but we're closer than many want to admit.  Stay the course gents.

UPDATE:  I failed to properly credit CANUCK FIGHTER with the link detailing the story about the real reason why the Israelis want the F-35.

India-Russia joint military exercise?

via Russia and India Report.

India and Russia will hold joint Indra-2015 military exercises in India's largest state Rajasthan on November 7-20, the Indian Defense Ministry said Thursday.
"A 250 member strong Russian Army contingent would arrive in Bikaner for INDRA-2015 for the joint exercise to be held with the Indian Army from 07 November to 20 November 2015," the ministry said in a press release.
The seventh joint Indra drills will take place in northern India's Mahajan firing range. The exercises will focus on ‘Counter Terrorism Operations in Desert Terrain under a United Nations Mandate,’ the press release added.
The drills are due to be conducted in two stages, namely "Combat Conditioning and Tactical Training" and "Validation," according to the press release. Senior military officials from India and Russia are expected to observe the exercises.
Russia and India have maintained close partnership in military and technical cooperation for decades. The two countries have been conducting joint military drills annually since 2003.

This.  This is why I find it hard to classify India as a "real deal" ally.  It also makes me question the "partnership" activities that the US military in general but the Marine Corps/Navy in particular seem so fond of.

India is doing what's in their best interest of course.  They not only get to cherry pick the best gear from both sides but they also get to train using the best tactics (ground and air) that both have to offer.

They probably have the best "hybrid" force on the planet.  They use Russian fighters while employing Western fighter tactics?  Then they get to work them out against both the US and the Russians to see how they stack up?  Now its migrating to their ground forces? Stunning in its simplicity, common sense and practicality.

Happy Veterans Day!

I'm not sure how it happened, but Veterans and Memorial day have become mixed and both days are looked upon as a day that you remember those that have been lost.

Nothing could be further from the truth.  This is a time to toss back a few, call that buddy that you haven't talked to in awhile...remember the good times... this day honors those that did the Patriot thing....the few that did the military thing.  Veterans day is to be celebrated.  Now get it done...if you're not hungover from the Marine Birthday Ball that is...

Saudi Arabia/GCC send even MORE armored vehicles to the Yemen front...

via Emirates24/7.

Arab coalition forces sent more armored vehicles to the Southwestern Yemeni town of Taiz on Monday as part of ongoing reinforcements in preparations for a final offensive to eject the Iranian-backed coup rebels, a Yemeni news network reported on Tuesday.
Four armored vehicles roared into the city on Monday morning to join other vehicles and military equipment sent by the coalition, which is led by Saudi Arabia and comprised of the UAE and other Gulf and Arab countries.
Masdar Press said the latest dispatch would support positions by the national Yemeni army and resistance as the clock begins ticking for the final battle.
It said the Houthis and their allies continued to shell the besieged city from their positions on hilltops on Monday, adding that the shelling targeted civilian areas.
Yemeni Vice President and Prime Minister Khalid Bahah told a Saudi TV channel on Sunday that the battle for Taiz would not be affected by UN peace moves and that the city would be liberated with days or weeks.
Meanwhile, more Sudanese troops arrived in Yemen to join the coalition forces fighting to end the coup and restore the legitimate government.
Military sources said the new batch, the second sent by Sudan which is a member of the coalition, would be deployed in areas assigned for them. They said the first batch, which arrived on October 22, was deployed in Aden to support operations by the coalition and national army in maintaining security.

Mutated terrorist/rebel groups are now a part of the modern battlefield.  The days of flying in and assaulting lightly armed groups is over.

Now?  Now you could fly in and face the equivalent of a infantry mechanized brigade just waiting to slice and dice your raid before they even touch down.

The world has changed but the concepts haven't.  We need to fix that with a quickness.  Lastly its interesting that the UN is becoming more and more irrelevant.  Both sides are basically ignoring the world body and acting in their own interests.

With another tropical storm hitting Yemen that country is in for a rough ride.  This will not end well for either side.  Whoever wins here still loses. 

Alpha CO. 3D AABN qualifies at Yuma Proving Grounds....Pics by Lance Cpl. Aaron James Vinculado

Congress orders the USAF to study reducing F-35 numbers...

via National Defense...

The challenge is playing a role in the service's decision to potentially reduce the number of F-35s it buys. It had originally planned to procure 1,763 but Congress has since asked the Air Force to reexamine that number. The service is currently working on a report, which it owes to Congress 180 days after the 2016 National Defense Authorization Act is enacted, he said.
"We're going to look at wargaming, what kind of capacity we need, what combination of fourth- and fifth-generation capability [we need], what long-range strike bomber does with respect to the ground attack or the precision attack capability — we're looking at all of those things," Carlisle said.
"As we look to the future and what we're going to do, I think there is a decision to be made on how many F-35s we are going to buy." However, "it's way too early to make that decision."

Critical mass is approaching.

The DoD is all but signalling that the number of F-35's bought is going to be reduced. 

OF COURSE THIS MEANS THAT A CLASSIC DEATH SPIRAL WILL RESULT!

The number of planes bought is reduced because they're too expensive, which means that the new number of planes bought is reduced because they're too expensive because they were previously reduced...and so on and so forth....

If we weren't talking about the idiocy of military leadership when it comes to national security and our future airpower I'd be laughing my ass off and raising a shot of JD.

Instead all I can do is marvel.  If a blogger could see the trouble coming (after being a HUGE supporter of the program) then certainly the guys in the Pentagon knew better.  Now we're facing the worst of all possible scenarios.  They have eviscerated US combat power for an airplane that underperforms and costs too much money.  We are seeing the worst military leadership in several generations...all because they were zealots instead of professionals.